Virgin Orbit Launcher One: Above the Clouds 2022-01-13

[db2os]

another launch today with a couple of CubeSat’s from various countries:

Above the Clouds | Virgin Orbit

Ignis / PAN A / PAN B / ADLER 1 / STORK 3 / SteamSat 2 / (STP-27VPB payloads)

[db2os]

Cosmic Girl (747) just took off…

- YouTube

[yiea]

Do you know TLE for satellites from this launch maybe?

[db2os]

nothing seen on CelesTrak, maybe someone else does have something?

[yiea]

I found it now on Celestrak: https://celestrak.com/satcat/tle.php?INTDES=2022-003 (according to tweet: https://twitter.com/TSKelso/status/1482051935578427393)

[fredy]

@yiea I’ve reviewed your suggestion about STORK-3. I’ve just changed it to have a temporary NORAD ID until there is an identification. It will be visible for scheduling in Network in the next minutes.

Its temporary NORAD ID is 99450

[yiea]

Thanks @fredy! As far as I know, the frequency should be 401.100 MHz (same one as other STORKs) with FSK9600.

I tried to add it, cause I’m curious if the new one works (and I spend two passes in the morning sitting on the cold balcony tracking them manually with SDR Sharp from the computer, and I appreciated the automaticity of SatNOGS even more ).

[yiea]

@fredy I just had a look into next passes and TLE and I think something is wrong.

I took NORAD ID from here: https://celestrak.com/satcat/tle.php?INTDES=2022-003
I suspect it is OBJECT F:

OBJECT F                
1 51099U 22003F   22014.80743887 -.00000285  00000-0  00000+0 0  9990
2 51099  44.9828 186.0592 0004544 221.1299 273.6530 15.23157338   122

While TLE taken e.g. in this observation (SatNOGS Network - Observation 5302381) looks like:

1 50199U 21125AV  22015.25001157 -.00060073  00000-0 -42597-3 0  9994
2 50199  53.2159 228.3158 0001185  56.1389 299.0374 15.73238292  7190

I see there is a small mismatch in NORAD ID 50199U (one of Starlinks) instead of 51099U (proper one) - maybe it was my mistake while completing the form or a one-number error while adding

[fredy]

My bad, I did the typo, I have removed any observations in Network. Now it has the right TLE, please reschedule.

[yiea]

Of course, thank you.

[fredy]

@yiea

Thanks @fredy! As far as I know, the frequency should be 401.100 MHz (same one as other STORKs) with FSK9600.

Please also suggest this change on the transmitter, I mean the FSK9k6.

[fredy]

@yiea it seems that we have some signal that looks like it comes from this launch but without decoded data. I’ll scheduled a couple more observations to test.

What is strange is that the signal is only received from your station, make me thinking that if it is stork-3 it may transmit only over your area.

[yiea]

I suspect you are right @fredy - SatRevolution is known from not using beacon at all (like they did with previous STORKs) and their company is based in Poland, so it could be true. But this orbit has low inclination, so it’s not the best for my balcony antenna, as it passes mostly on the South, so I don’t expect any good observations…

Maybe @sp6hfe - you could try to listen too?

[sp6hfe]

Hi,

for recent STORKS launch I was trying to modify my antenna frequency range in the station’s setup just to allow scheduling, but I was not successful in receiving anything on my turnstile.

My antenna is pretty low and in between buildings so it may not see their sats even despite pretty low frequency of operation.

[fredy]

This is from the latest good STORK-3 observation, with the red line is described the OBJECT E (51098). I’ve changed the TLE set to follow. Now we need to demodulate/decode it to be 100% sure that this is STORK-3.